Hari’s piece is a very good and thoroughly documented study of Israel's history of provocations to justify its aggressive expansionism. However in this case I’m not yet persuaded that Israel lured Hamas into a trap even though they were aware of its military preparations inside Gaza. The Israelis certainly exploited the attack after it occurred with unprecedented ferocity but it was initially seen inside and outside Israel as a humiliating intelligence failure and a dangerous blow to the deterrent credibility of its vaunted war machine. Netanyahu's standing plunged in the immediate aftermath of the war and it appeared his government was about to be toppled. Moreover, I take the public hand-wringing of the Biden administration at face value. Its failure to stop the genocide has made it look weak at home and. abroad. So we will need more evidence that it colluded with the Israelis to satisfy the ethnic cleansing and expansionist ambitions of the fanatical Zionist far right and to draw Iran into a wider war to redraw the map of the Middle East.
Wasn’t the Hamas leadership in Gaza caught between in a rock and a hard place? Should it have stood down and watched as the Palestinian issue was definitively buried by the extension of the US-brokered Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia and the realization of the India Middle East Europe Corridor (IMEC)? The current genocide is horrific and in retrospect makes its somewhat undisciplined and chaotic military operation look like suicidal folly. Would a smaller scale raid aimed solely at military targets have provoked a less than barbaric Israeli reprisal? Perhaps. But it would not have resulted in the greatest anti-Zionist backlash and mobilization we’ve yet witnessed and placed the Palestine issue back on the global agenda. Will the Palestinian masses in retrospect say the enormous sacrifice was worth it? Who can say? What would we as a leadership have done differently? Would we have downplayed or renounced armed struggle in favour of mass civil disobedience modelled on the South African anti-apartheid struggle? Very likely, but let's recall the nonviolent “marches of return” under Hamas leadership in 2018-20 which saw hundreds of Palestinians killed and thousands wounded by Israeli snipers, and the consistent smaller scale violent attacks on unarmed protestors elsewhere in occupied Palestine. In the face of Israeli military and settler violence, we would have difficulty consistently mobilizing large numbers of non-violent demonstrators and resisting calls for armed self-defence. We should keep building the BDS movement but recognize also that the Palestinians - unlike the ANC leadership which confronted the Boers - are up against a much more formidable oppressor which also enjoys the backing of US imperialism. Pappe, Ritter, and others may well be right in anticipating that the rise of Israeli religious fundamentalism and the associated costs of its military adventures will accelerate a brain drain and provoke capital flight, and that the resulting economic stagnation will make the Zionist state critically vulnerable, but at present this is unfortunately still more a hope rather than a reality. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32859): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32859 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108923556/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
